The present invention relates to a semiconductor device, specifically a technique to be effectively applied to a semiconductor device including a solid-state imaging device.
Autofocus detection should be performed fast and accurately for high-quality video imaging with a digital camera. Recently, there has been developed a digital camera, which employs a solid-state imaging device including a plurality of pixels each having two photoelectric conversion units, and performs autofocus adjustment by an image-plane phase-difference detection method.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication Nos. 2013-106194, 2008-193527, and 2013-041890 each describe a solid-state imaging device including pixels each having two photodiodes therein. In such solid-state imaging devices, a gate electrode provided between the two photodiodes is not a component of a transfer transistor for reading charge in each photodiode.